Wednesday, September 26, 2007

We arrived at LAX on Tuesday morning about 8:30. The boss picked us up at the airport and we headed to Long Beach for the solar cell show. Traffic was mildly uncooperative but we arrive at the convention center about an hour after leaving the airport. We would have been there sooner except for the fact that the boss made a wrong turn and we had to backtrack a little. I don’t know why we had him driving considering he had just arrived from Japan and had 1 hour of sleep in the last 24+ hours. Anyway, we get in line to register for the show and we sit in line for over an hour before we get to the front of the line. The problem was that we were in the wrong line and had to jump over to head in the right direction. 45 minutes later we are ready to go.

The show was good and we met with customers and as well as possible new customers and headed to lunch before our return trip home. Everyplace we went was full of people and had an hour wait. The problem was that we had to head back to the airport for our flight home in an hour and thus didn’t have a lot of time. We finally found a place about 4 blocks away and had a quick meal before heading back to LAX.

The flight home started like a flight should. We left on time and I had a small person sitting next to me who fell asleep right away. The I noticed that her breath smelled like garlic and I had random breath alerts from that point on the rest of the trip.

Somewhere over Iowa we got the announcement that air traffic was backing up and we would have to fly above Des Moines for 20 minutes before finishing our trip home. A short time later the captain informs us that we are being diverted to Rockford to refuel because we don’t have enough left to follow the flight plans and get us to Chicago. But thankfully the controllers made a switch and put us on a straight run home and we only arrived 15 minutes late.

By the time I got home it was close to midnight and I was ready to sleep. I had a quick drink of water and hit the hay. 4 hours later I woke with stomach cramps and felt like I was going to hurl. They eventually went away an hour or so later, just in time for various members of the family to start moving around and ending any sleep I hoped to catch before returning to work.

Good things on the trip were meeting Bayne, eating at Ming’s, having a good meeting with the customer, and watching Ocean’s 13 on the flight home. Not a terrible trip after all.